Solving After-School

IT ALL STARTED with a Disney movie and a frustrated mom hunched over a laptop on a weekday night.

Her daughter had been begging to take gymnastics, and with her husband out at a work-related happy hour, she finally carved out time to search. She got to page six of Google search results, clicking through one unhelpful website after another, each offering more questions than answers: What age groups? What times? How many people are on this waitlist? Why aren’t prices listed? One class ended before 4 p.m.; another was already full; and a third was a 30-minute drive away.

All of these were impossible to manage with her work schedule. Hours later, she had nothing to show for the effort. Her daughter’s dreams were on hold and she hadn’t even eaten dinner.

In that defeated moment, she opened DoorDash to order food. A flash of rage hit. Why was it so easy to order sushi from her couch yet so hard to find a gymnastics class for her kid? There had to be a better way.

That mom was Molly Morse, co-founder of Recess, and that night changed everything. She picked up the phone and called Amy Kiska, her longtime friend and colleague. “This is it,” she said. “This is so painful, so overlooked. We could have a genuinely positive impact fixing this.”

Kiska, six months pregnant at the time, didn’t hesitate. Within weeks, they had poured themselves into research and user interviews. By December, Kiska had her baby. One month later, Morse and Kiska launched the beta version of Recess. And just a few weeks after that, they had multiple offers from investors—one of whom danced in celebration on LinkedIn, posting, “This is a space I’ve wanted to invest in for a decade.”

SHAPED BY PARENTS

Recess is reimagining how parents discover and book kids’ activities, building the go-to marketplace for after-school classes, summer camps, school holiday care and more. Think OpenTable for kids’ programs.

Parents can search, book and organize everything in one place. Best of all, bookings sync directly with providers’ systems, so there is no more phone tag, guesswork or PDF camp calendars from 2014.

The partnership between Morse and Kiska was magic from the start. Kiska, Recess’ CEO, is no stranger to building things from the ground up. One of the first five employees at Christian Louboutin, she led the brand’s global expansion to 35 countries. Morse, COO, brought deep expertise in marketplace operations from several venture-backed startups.

They had worked together at Infarm, launching its U.S. business mid-pandemic. That trial by fire proved they work well with each other even under pressure—and sparked the dream of one day starting something together.

Launching Recess has been as fast-paced as it’s been mission-driven. Within five months of that first late-night epiphany, the company had funding in the bank and was rolling out features like instant booking. But the team is focused first not on scale but on real impact, starting in their home base right here in Austin.

Why Austin? For starters, Morse lives here, but it’s also a tech hub brimming with entrepreneurial energy. Mueller, the densest Austin neighborhood outside of downtown and also Morse’s home, became the perfect test neighborhood.

“It’s walkable with tons of public spaces, and that naturally engenders lots of chance encounters, conversations and cool ideas,” Morse says. “I’d run into business owners at the farmers market, get pitch advice from a neighbor at the basketball court or swap stories with other moms at Thinkery.”

Ideas for Recess were shaped by real conversations with real parents, all happening right in our backyard. “This is a place where parenthood and entrepreneurship have intersected pretty naturally for me,” Morse says, “and it’s been the perfect ecosystem to start Recess.”

UNITING SCATTERED PROGRAMS

The problem they’re solving is one many parents know too well. School ends at 3 p.m., but work doesn’t. Sign-up windows for camps and classes feel like a competitive sport. And the burden often falls disproportionately on mothers, some of whom leave the workforce completely because they can’t figure out how to piece it all together.

“We’ve heard so many stories from parents who feel trapped—like they have no good options,” the team shares. “We want to change that. We want to make it easier, not harder, to do something good for your child.”

What surprised Morse and Kiska most along the way was just how many amazing programs already exist—if you can find them. Once they really dove into the data, they uncovered a world of options: DJ workshops for middle schoolers, STEM intensives at UT, flamenco classes for toddlers, even a camp where kids train their dogs.

“There’s this perception that there’s nothing out there, but that’s only because the options are hidden and scattered,” they say. “We just needed to create a single place to find it all.”

In the short term, Recess is focused on fine-tuning its product in Austin, listening closely to both parents and providers. But over the next few years, the vision will become national. The founders plan to expand city by city, making sure Recess works as seamlessly in Phoenix or Philly as it does in their own neighborhood.

The platform currently serves families with elementary and middle school kids—the group most affected by the school/work gap. But they’re already laying the groundwork to support families across the full journey, from parent-and-me baby classes to teen internships and even college prep.

The story of Recess is still being written, but one thing is clear: it was born out of a personal need and built by people determined to meet it with empathy, ambition and a bit of startup scrappiness. In a world where ordering tacos is easier than enrolling your child in karate, Recess is saying: Enough. Parents deserve better. And they’re making it happen one activity at a time.

“If you can find the program that clicks for your child, it’s such a feel-good moment as a parent,” Morse says. “You’ve got the care you need and your kid is having a fantastic time. That’s such a parenting win.”

LEARN MORE

Recess is just beginning, but the service’s foundation is now set and the platform is ready to grow. “We’re hiring,” the team says. “We’re looking for people who care deeply about helping families [and] want to build something that makes a real difference.” 

For more information, visit hello-recess.com.